January 2021 Volume 6 Issue 1
Dear Pastor and praying friends:
After a three week break for Christmas and New Year, we are back into our classes. The two classes we currently are doing are Morphology & Syntax, and Language Learning. Morphology & Syntax is a class identifying the grammatical structure of languages and is the third course that complements the two previous courses of Phonetics and Phonemics. I enjoy learning languages, in one class there is a fellow missionary here at BBTI who is fluent in Japanese. In class we take turns asking him how to say things in Japanese. As the class progresses, we will be no longer allowed to ask statements in English but only in Japanese. You may be wondering why Japanese, I thought you need to learn Portuguese? Yes, we will be learning Portuguese in the future, but right now the class is training us how to gain a target language on a personal level when we are no longer in a school. Through our classes we will implement what we learned about language structure and put it into practice.
The Pastor of the Church we are attending asked me to preach a Salvation message at the Christmas Sunday Evening Service. I preached on the “Gift of Jesus to Reconcile us to the Father.” One of the mothers at the church told Lorin she was very thankful for the message and my salvation testimony. She relayed how she still has a child that is not saved, and the message and testimony gave her hope for her child to be saved.
The Wednesday before school was to start back up, we were informed that our truck was finally complete and ready for pick up. We left the next morning and drove to Memphis, TN to picked up our truck and returned on Friday. We would like to say thank you to everyone who prayed and gave financially to our truck needs, we are truly thankful and grateful for your care and love.
Lord willing, we will be starting our visa process to go to language school in March and praying that we can leave for Brazil in July. Please pray that God will open a door that no man can close, so that we can get to the field and finally end this long journey of preparation so that the new journey of overseas service can begin.
If your church is located within a four-hour radius of the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas area, and you would like for us to visit, please let us know. We are always looking for opportunities to serve by presenting missions and by witnessing to the lost. We currently have 95% of our support coming in, and we are praying that God will increase our support level to 100% quickly. There is much for which to praise the Lord, but specifically, I’d like to thank Him for the safety He has provided as we have traveled back and forth from school to church the past several months.
Family Updates by Lorin
Deacon (6) Last time I wrote I talked about Deacon getting his fingernail ripped off by a grocery cart. We are happy to update that it has grown back healthy and strong. Thank you for your prayers.
Deacon has found a new love for Legos. He got a set for Christmas and has been building like crazy. It is wonderful to see how his mind works, how his imagination expands. He really enjoyed this Christmas. The church that we go to while we are here at BBTI has been a huge blessing to Deacon. He has lots of friends and amazing Sunday school teachers. He has enjoyed staying in one spot and getting to know people. He loved watching the Christmas play the church put on and the different gifts the church people shared and especially the Christmas breakfast that served his favorite breakfast, Cereal and milk.
Eden (4) This Christmas was a very unique Christmas for us. This was our first Christmas away from any family. We enjoyed a time of quiet family time. One of the unique things that happened this Christmas was that a local thrift store invited us to come with 4 other families and shop for free. We were able to shop for each other and so we all started shopping. The next time I turned around Eden had a basket full of things walking with an employee. They had a special wrapping station that the kids could go to and get their presents wrapped without the other family members knowing what they bought. I noticed that she was going back and forth back and forth with baskets full!! I walked over and asked. How much stuff are you getting? The employee ladies told me, don’t worry about it. She is very excited and really enjoys shopping. When it was time to leave, we had 3 massive boxes filled with wrapped presents. We barely got everything in our van. We got home put everything under our tree. Christmas Day came we started handing out the presents to find that a lot of them were, from Eden, to Eden. She was shopping for herself!!! She had so many presents she didn’t know what to do!!! It was very funny.
Enoch (23 m) Our little boy is almost 2!!! I can’t believe how fast he has grown. Christmas was a special time for him. He is now old enough to participate in the different activities that we had. We were able to go to the Christmas parade here in town. He loved seeing all the lights and cars while enjoying ice cream. Each night we would read different verses about Jesus birth and then ask questions about the verse that we read, and the kids had to answer. Tayler would ask Enoch a question and he would smile and answer the question with different answers and then repeat the answer. It was super cute. Afterward we got out their advent calendars and he got to open the day we were on and eat his “snack”. We really enjoy teaching our children from a young age about Jesus and who He is and why He came while having fun and creating good memories.
Chandler (Due 2021) Little one it is time to come!! It is almost February!! Just don’t be born on your brother’s birthday. We have been waiting anxiously for your arrival. Everything is ready!! Siblings are waiting very impatiently. We are ready to meet you and to learn about you. Just come quickly.
I Thessalonians 5:25 “Brethren, pray for us.”
Prayer Requests:
- For Lorin and I as we continue our study at BBTI.
- Lorin and the New Baby.
- For the many Churches that have said they would like to take us on for support, pray God would enable them to have the finances to support us.
- For our current supporting churches as some are having financial struggles.
- For our raised support that it will continue, and that God will bless our supporting churches.
- For the People of Mozambique that God would work even now in the hearts and lives of the people to prepare them for the Gospel.
- For our ability to learn quickly when we begin to study Portuguese.
- For our continued good health.
- That our Spiritual lives will remain close to God, for us to grow each day closer to him, and not stray from His will or be caught up in the snares of the Devil.
Thank you to those who have given to this special need. Please Pray for God’s provision regarding our truck repairs.
